MagicHow

The ICC’s President, David Morgan, has revealed that the Future Tours Programme (FTP) planned for the period 2012-2020 will relax restrictions around the concept. Teams do not need to play each other home and away over a six year cycle as is the case currently.

What is interesting though is that the current version of the FTP only spans 6 years, and was drawn up in 2006. I find it bizarre that the ICC will be coming out with an 8 year schedule (2012-2020) at a time when a lot of folks, including administrators and players, don’t even know what’s around the corner 2 years from now. In the last couple of years, cricket has gone through so much change with the advent of private leagues, IPL, Champions T20 league, questions over the relevance of ODIs and tests, etc.

Then again, I’d be stupid if I expected the ICC to actually make any sort of sense.

A two-tiered structure for test cricket, in the form of a test championship, seems a natural solution to rationalize player workload and have better more even contests. Sangakkara has every right to feel aggrieved that Sri Lanka was not included in the ICC’s discussions over a 2-tier system. But, does a 2-tier structure mean that a team is shut out from the top tier forever? Of course not.

A 2-tier system does bring with it some uncertainty over whether a team being demoted to the lower tier could mean loss of spectatorship / TV audiences. I’m fairly sure that boards who are opposed to a 2-tier system are mainly concerned about the worth of their TV (& other media) rights if there’s no guarantee that their team will play in the top tier instead of battling it out for the wooden spoon. There’s no doubt that money from media rights finances the game. So it would be stupid to take on those who pay up the cash!

Yet, if the cycle lasted say 3 years instead of a promotion & relegation every year, TV rights owners have some amount of ability to predict who will play whom where and when. This could mean they are far more likely to dish out the cash than if teams were promoted & relegated every year. The other reason, which I wrote about 5.5 years ago, why an annual promotion / relegation should not be used is to avoid a situation where a team like (say) Ireland just happens to top the 2nd tier in one year, gets promoted to the top tier and gets thrashed by all and sundry.

Assume there are a total of 12 teams – Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, Kenya, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe (it is likely that at some point of time, if the West Indies ‘splits’ and individual island countries compete by themselves, we will need a 3-tier system). There would be 2 tiers of 6 teams each (Based on the current rankings, it would look like – Tier-1: India, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Australia, England & Pakistan; Tier-2: New Zealand, West Indies, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland & Kenya).

Only test matches played within the tiers would count for any points. If teams that played for test trophies (Australia-England, England-South Africa, Sri Lanka-Australia, India-Australia, Australia-West Indies etc.) ended up in different tiers, they could still play their ‘marquee’ series. But the result of the tests and series wouldn’t count in the ICC test championship points system. Boards would of course need to remember that if players got burnt out playing the marquee series, then their team’s prospects in the test championship could be impacted.

If each team had to play all the other teams in the same tier in test series (of 3 tests each – not more, not less) home and once away, they’d need to play a total of 30 tests (15 home & 15 away) over a 3 year period. That’s not much. In the 3 years spanning 2006, 2007 and 2008, 7 of the 9 test teams played more than 24 tests.

The points structure could be fairly simple (10 for a test win, 5 for a draw, 0 for a loss, with bonus points for winning by an innings or anything more than 7 wickets) and also factor in the series result as well as whether the it was a home or away fixture and adjust the weightage accordingly.

There would be no concept of ‘Super Eight’, ‘Super Six’, knock-out games or a grand final. At the end of the 3 year window, the team with the most points would be declared the winner of that particular tier. The team that ended up last in the 1st tier would swap places with the team that topped the 2nd tier. In case of a tie, number of series wins away, number of test wins away, points from away wins, etc. would be used to determine who should be ranked higher.

There would also be individual awards for bowling, batting and fielding.

In fact, this sort of 2-tiered structure with equal matches for all would satisfy the demands from the likes of Sri Lanka, New Zealand, West Indies, Pakistan, etc. who claim that a 2-tier system would not benefit them.

For the boards, the TV revenue from ‘marquee’ series is a much bigger factor. So how do they reconcile themselves to it? Perhaps with the knowledge that if they manage their players well, create a large enough pool to pick from and create sane schedules, their best players would still be available for the marquee series.

Asking if the 50-over game is in danger sounds timely considering the following:

• I, and I suspect several others, yawned after realizing that two 50-over ODI tournaments will be in progress simultaneously (the 7 ODIs between Australia & England and the 4-match tri-series involving New Zealand, India & Sri Lanka.
• Sachin Tendulkar has a proposal to save the format from becoming irrelevant.
• The ECB announced that domestic games would be 40-overs a side from the 2010 season.

The ICC keeps bleating about how it is proud that there are 3 viable formats of the game, and that all three can co-exist. That’s actually rubbish. If the scheduling of tours & tournaments doesn’t change significantly, one form of the game (and I’m willing to bet that it won’t be T20) will gradually disappear until there’s nothing left of it, except for silly-looking administrators (to paraphrase Lewis Carroll).

Let’s assume that there will be 3 formats of the game, and that a typical series would have 2 tests (sadly), 5 ODIs and 2 T20 games. Factor in ICC rules (can’t locate it) that mandate at least 3 days gap between tests, 2 warm-up games (1 before the tests and 1 before the ODIs), at most 1 back-to-back ODI, 2 days gap between the other ODIs, 1 day gap between the T20 games and at least 1-2 days gap between each leg (Test, ODI & T20) legs of the tour. We’re talking of something like a 40-day tour, with 21 playing days. Nearly half the tour’s duration would be devoted to the 5-day game (either the actual playing days or the warm-ups or the time between first-class games). It definitely does seem like the softest target. Remove the tests from the tour, and you can easily squeeze in at least 5 more ODIs.

Now, on an average, each team plays around 3 test series during a year. Let’s assume that all these series are 2-test, 5-ODI & 2-T20 affairs (which is a very simplistic & minimal assumption). So we’re talking of a total touring time of 120 days, out of which just over half are playing days. If only it was so simple.

There are ICC tournaments to contend with, each lasting 30-40 days at least, on an annual basis. Then there are some series that don’t fit in to the minimalistic 2-5-2 model. They may have 3 tests, 5 ODIs and 2 T20 games. Others like Australia’s tour of England have 5 tests, 7 ODIs and 2 T20 games. That tour started on June 24 (excluding the T20 World Cup) and will end on Sep 20 – nearly 3 months, with nearly 50 playing days! Then there are some other meaningless tri-nation tournaments. Then there’re the new leagues – IPL and Champions League.

So, players could be “on-the-road” for something like 220-250 days a year, playing on around 120-140 of those days.

Isn’t it still obvious that if the ICC continues to harp on retaining 3 formats, something is going to give?

Yet, will it necessarily result in T20 driving the 50-over game out of existence? I suspect not, primarily for commercial reasons.

Assuming that other factors are identical across both the formats (i.e. teams play out the entire allotment of overs, and lose the same number of wickets), TV viewers watching a 50-over game would see 60% more ads than when they were watching a T20 game (figure it out – 49 over-breaks v/s 19 over-breaks per innings).

Even though you can squeeze in 2 T20 games within the duration of 1 50-over ODI, the number of ad-breaks between overs is reduced by 22% (49 v/s 2×19). We haven’t even got to the possibility that more wickets are likely to fall across 50 overs compared to 20 overs, thereby increasing the number of ad breaks!

Even the ECB’s (and Cricket South Africa’s) moves to 40-over cricket will fail for the same reason – 20% less ad-breaks. The BCCI is unlikely to support the ECB & CSA on this. Cricket Australia moved away from the tri-series format only this year. So they’re unlikely to take a plunge without having evaluated the benefits of staging 2 bilateral ODI series compared to the ODI triangular format. There’s probably not too much of a point in discussing what other countries will do.

In any case, the ICC had already announced the venues for the next 3 World Cups over three years ago. This doesn’t imply that a change in realities won’t make them change the format of those tournaments. After all, the 2010 edition of the ICC Champions Trophy (hosted by West Indies) was converted into the T20 World Cup. Such a move would need the BCCI’s backing (and by implication a few other boards that kow-tow to them), and that seems very unlikely at this point in time.